Live from World at Work Total Rewards 2026 with Special Guest Joe Ranzau

[00:00:08] [SPEAKER_02] Well, welcome everyone to a very special episode of the HR and Payroll 2.0 podcast. We're live at the World at Work Total Rewards event here in San Antonio, Texas, a rainy San Antonio, Texas. And as always, I'm joined by the legendary Julie Fernandez. Welcome, Julie.

[00:00:21] [SPEAKER_00] Thanks so much, Pete. And now we have a really cool guest. I've been waiting for a very long time to have Joe Ranzau with us today. Yeah, welcome for having me. Joe is a partner of Global Payroll and Workforce Strategy, right? For Grant Thornton.

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_02] All the easy things. That's right. Yeah, the simple things.

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, the simple, simple things. And we've started taking selfies at events when we run into each other because we are always crossing paths at the big industry.

[00:00:44] [SPEAKER_01] And we do just happen to be running past each other. Very seldom do we actually get to sit and spend much time.

[00:00:50] [SPEAKER_02] Well, Julie and I never see each other in anywhere but other than on the road. And we're always like going, you know, hey.

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_01] Divide and conquer.

[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, we rarely get to record like this. So yeah, it's great.

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_01] It's a treat. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, no, we're excited to have you, Joe. Look, we ask all of our guests, how did they get into this wacky world of HR and payroll and why on earth are you still around it?

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_01] So I think like everyone else, it's a complicated answer, right? And really quickly, back in college, I'm old. Everyone was going into MIS degrees and I saw the deluge coming. Didn't want to do it. I looked around and said, what does everyone need? Well, the government exists. So you're either going to have to file taxes or HR. I'm not good with numbers, ironic. I'm going to go into HR. I'm bad with math too. And, you know, I'm leading payrolls. Exactly. So hopefully no one's listening that thinks math is important there.

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_01] And then, long story short, went into change management, transformation. I've never met anything I didn't want to change and make better. Joined multiple consulting firms and they discovered my illicit HR path. Drug me back over into that side of the world. And what I decided is, hey, I could actually affect major change for payroll by being a therapist for HR, IT, finance and business.

[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_02] It's a great way. It's a great way to put it. I love it. I love it. We appreciate you, man. We're glad you're here. So, yeah.

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, exactly. One of the things that you and I have shared in Crossing, whenever we do Cross, is just, you know, like who we naturally touch different stakeholders in the organization. Quite often, you know, because of Grant Thornton and what your company does, you're working with the CFOs. Whereas I might more directly be working with the CHROs.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_00] So, I think this is a perfect opportunity to just get your perspective a little bit on the CFO buyer and how that differs because it is CFO-led.

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_01] Sure. So, it's actually been an interesting observation for me being an HR consultant, a payroll consultant, that I primarily work with CFOs and controllers. A lot of times, it's risk and it's risk mitigation, rather, and the unknown. I think all of us, and you've probably joked about it on your podcast, a lot of executives are aware of payroll. They know that they like having their paycheck. They have no idea what happens under the surface, nor do they really want to have an idea. They just want someone to tell them, yes, it's okay. No, it's not. And here's how you fix it or something in between.

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_01] And so, most often, maybe it's brand permission. Maybe it's the size of companies I'm working with, where once you start getting into the billions of dollars of annual spend, CFOs tend to start focusing on that pretty heavily, that I get pulled in from that lens. And so, again, really risk-focused. Some cost efficiency, some labor spend. You know, the studies change every year, whether it's between 1% to 4% of labor leakage coming out of U.S. payroll. That's obviously very compelling to everyone, but especially to a CFO.

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_01] And then when you get into that HR side of the house, Julie, I'm sure you see it a lot, but it's much more about employee experience and how we're going to affect that overall lifecycle, driver retention, et cetera. And so, again, a little bit of a different focus.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, that's when you start hearing the CHRO leaders always say, well, I really just want the best one for me, and budget doesn't matter. And I'm like, oh, Lord. It sure does matter to whoever is approving this thing.

[00:03:50] [SPEAKER_01] It doesn't matter until it does.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_00] I bet you're wrong.

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_01] And that's how we end up with best of breed across everything. And it's actually one of the things as a consultant I diagnose when I'm coming in. I want to know not just what your core HCM is, not what your payroll system is, but what are you using for learning? What are you using for talent acquisition? And so on and so forth, because their buying strategy then tells me the type of organization I'm going into. And again, payroll anywhere from a dozen to 20 systems in the U.S., you know, on average to make a single payroll work. And it's very telling without me even having to ask.

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't even need to know the dirty laundry. It's right there. Exactly. You know, I think your risk story and kind of how that is primary resonates for me. I had a it was actually a CHRO leader, not a finance leader talking about global payroll. And he said, well, I could do something to harmonize and to bring together global payroll and be a hero. But I could also create myself right out of a job.

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_00] Because it sounds like that alone is a very risky value proposition. Right. To get into.

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_01] You could work yourself out of a job. But I think the the constant state of change. Yeah. Is there an optimized payroll out there? I mean, I've heard of Amazon's operations, but I bet if you talk to the Amazon team, I don't I don't have the current head of Amazon. They're continuing to have to evolve that where they basically have it down to the point from what I've heard where a warehouse employee can be paid as they're walking to the car. Yeah. Right. From clocking out to that shift. But they're still having to accommodate and drive transformation.

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_01] And that's probably the most advanced operation that I've heard of today.

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Yeah. No, absolutely.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_02] 100% agree with that.

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_00] Interesting.

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_00] How about I wanted to bring up with you just to get your perspective. I don't know, but I imagine we might have a different perspective on where does payroll sit in the organization?

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_01] Chicken or the egg is what I like to call it. The million dollar question or maybe it's a billion dollar question with inflation. Now, I as a consultant, it depends. Yeah. That would be the answer I love to give everyone. But where I've gravitated towards is when it should be in finance. And for me, it should be in finance when it's a services organization that either bills or recognizes revenue based on hours worth. Yeah. Right. Because that is directly attributable to the bottom line. It's how we forecast. It's how we get money in the door.

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_01] And so it's an operational imperative versus an organization where perhaps it's more culture focused and based. Maybe it's a higher salaried workforce. There's less complexity. We're not billing based on that time. We're not recognizing revenue based on that time. HR might make sense.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_01] If it's a mom and pop or a mid-market company, not super complex either or. Because, again, payroll is almost completely dependent on HR for data. But that still doesn't mean sitting within side HR, they're going to get that data any better than they did sitting over in finance. Exactly. Agreed. Maybe it's more of a governance issue rather than where they sit. Yeah, agreed.

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_02] Of course, there's always shared service. I think it depends on the culture of the organization, too. If they're hyper, you know, finance-led, control-driven, I think payroll makes a lot of sense to be in their world. Sure. But then again, we've been talking about how we've seen some organizations nestling it under the Total Rewards organization, which I think is an interesting and very strategic play of bringing payroll comp and Ben together for that pay experience sort of lens.

[00:07:02] [SPEAKER_00] The other one that we've been seeing now and again is nestled under compliance or risk.

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I could see that, too.

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_00] You know, even compensation leaders, too, or benefits with the, you know, with the risk on fiduciary responsibility.

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_01] And with the controller lens on, that's often what they're worried about is where's our risk? How do we mitigate it? And usually that risk function rolls up somewhere into the CFO organization, so it makes a lot of sense. I liked the concept you were talking about with Total Rewards as well, right? Yeah. Because there's this, not amongst payroll folks, but there's this misconception in general that payroll's the one creating these data sources, these plans, the comp structure. They're the engine that takes all the time.

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_02] They're the middleware. Yeah, really.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_01] Exactly. Yeah, right? And the Total Rewards team is the one that is designing these plans, et cetera, that then have to get applied up against the business, employee election, statutory rules for an output. And our payroll folks are heroic in that they oftentimes just accept what's thrown over the wall at them rather than, you know, go back and redesign an actual program. So perhaps I'd love to talk to some folks that have it all under one umbrella to see how it works.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_01] Agreed.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_00] I heard another all under one umbrella earlier this morning that made me cringe, but I do know that more and more organizations and in public sector you see sometimes the CAO, the chief administrative officer.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I've seen that.

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_00] And they're like, oh, well, they pulled, in this particular case, they're like, oh, well, they pulled HR out of that, but payroll is in that, you know? And so is like the mailed room or something. Yeah. And I'm thinking, oh, no.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_01] And that's when it's a back office function in their mind, which I think goes to your culture conversation.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. But does payroll, like I've always said payroll at its, you know, most central kernel at the root is risk management, right? Does it belong maybe with a chief risk officer? I don't know.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_01] I think there's merit and sometimes it's the type of industry. Yeah. The type of geographies that you're in and the level of regulation that you're up against where that may make perfect sense versus, you know, I'm a manufacturer of common widgets somewhere else and not a lot of scrutiny, not much going on. I have 500 employees at two sites. Yeah. It's not a big deal. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:03] [SPEAKER_02] Just as you're out there, you know, working with companies, are you seeing a change in attitude towards payroll about what its importance and strategic value is or are we still? Far, far away. I think it depends. I think it depends.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_01] It does depend. I'm seeing a change of attitude amongst payroll leaders on what matters. And if you want, I'm happy to wade into the chief people officer debate. I might have an unpopular take there, but I do see that cultural shift, whether it's the thought leadership that the two of you are putting out. Or I think Nick and Max and a few others have dropped books recently. And if you look at the premise of the book, it's about elevating the payroll professional and how we communicate.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_01] Because a really hard lesson for me early on in my career was it's not enough to be right. Yeah. Again, never meant anything I didn't want to change, never meant anything that I couldn't make better. But I had to bring others along on the journey. Simply being right, which payroll, right? We're going to balance to the penny. Yeah. We know what we're talking about. But it still doesn't build that compelling vision to bring people along with us. It's logical, but it's not emotional to get that hook to bring them along.

[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think we've got to be change agents and storytellers now, too, in our roles as HR and payroll leaders, right? Trying to evoke the change we want. Yeah. There's a lot to that.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_01] And I can imagine folks listening going, you know, I'm buried just trying to get this payroll out the door. Right. Now I have to be a motivational storyteller that convinces people to move things along. Yeah. No. However, it's understanding your audience. It's some basic things for taking the data that you have and translating it, meeting someone where they're at rather than where you're at.

[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Right. And I think that, yeah, and I think some of it is going to be bottoms up with the payroll leaders having to speak upward and communicate what their value is and show that to the leadership team, right? And show that to the executives so that they do start bringing them to the table and having the conversation and integrating them, not just technically, but integrating them into the process and the governance and the decision making and all that.

[00:10:57] [SPEAKER_01] Governance is huge. And I know we've been talking about it for a few years, but it's something that I've been spending more and more of my time thinking about. So we'd love to talk about it. But there's an anecdote. Just this week, I was with the CFO of roughly a $10 billion company. Right. And we had just done a major readout of everything that was going on. And we were in the elevator because we were going to go have some adult beverages afterwards. Right. Yeah. You know, hard discussions.

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_02] We'll do that to you. Payroll. Everyone needed a drink.

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_01] And in the elevator, he turns around and sort of joking. And he's like, you know, I don't know why people do this because it's a thankless job. It is. No one cares if you get it right. And the moment anything's wrong, everyone's upset at you, even if you didn't do it. And that goes back to the it's a CF function, right? It's a C average grade in the U.S. for those of you from overseas. And F, you failed the moment anything goes wrong. No one ever calls and says that was the best damn paycheck I ever thought. Wow, that was amazing.

[00:11:50] Yeah.

[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_01] But I like... You nailed it.

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_00] It's been right all 52 times. Exactly.

[00:11:55] [SPEAKER_01] But I liked the fact that a CFO who candidly said, I know nothing about payroll, don't want to own the function, need help figuring out how we optimize, et cetera, also recognizes what they have asked the payroll professional to do and what that means culturally or just systematically within an organization. Yeah.

[00:12:15] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that CHROs are getting a better engagement with payroll and seeing the value that they bring? Because I do something called the Payroll Profession Confidence Index. And one of the glaring, undiscussed things in this industry is how abusive HR can be to payroll. And I'll use the word abusive because I can share quotes to prove it. But the relationship there, it's almost like it's an organization that is charged with inclusion but excludes their most important partner to a self-detriment is the way that

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_02] I wrote this last year. Like, what the hell do we have to do to at least get HR to respect us?

[00:12:50] [SPEAKER_01] Right? I'll start back at the beginning of the question, which is do I think CHROs are starting or do see the benefit there? I believe CHROs see the value in people data and the analytic depth that it can bring to the organization to make strategic decisions. I think they realize that it oftentimes has to get bumped up against payroll data. And most of the time it doesn't match. It's apples to kumquats. Imagine that. It's oranges, right?

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_01] And so having those activities to sort of normalize the data, make sure we understand the data sources, et cetera, yes. Now, again, similar large organizations, CHRO gets that. The head of HRIT is making design decisions without consulting payroll. There's no cross-functional governance. They're not even meeting with some of their other key partners like the time and attendance system, et cetera. And they're lobbing them over the fence. And of course, what does payroll do? We just absorb it. We don't stop. We make a little noise.

[00:13:48] [SPEAKER_01] We'll grouse a little bit and complain, but we just absorb it. So there's awareness, but there's not action on what it means. And then there's usually a lot of back-end cleanup for why can't we reconcile this?

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. I just wish we could get everyone on the same page about what payroll is, what it can do, and where it belongs in that conversation. Because, I mean, for some employees, that is the employee experience in their mind, right? It's everything.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_00] It's the one that matters, right?

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_02] It shouldn't be the only thing, but it is, right? I mean, we've got to have meaningful work. We've also got to have, you know, make people feel good about coming to work. But if we don't pay them well, I mean, or properly, I should say not well, that's debatable. So, you know, it all falls apart. And, oh, by the way, you know, you talk about your $10 billion company. Half of that $10 billion is probably on the P&L, their payroll. Sure. Which, by the way, will get them put in prison if someone doesn't do their job in payroll. But yet, it's just sort of out of sight, out of mind. Like, no big deal.

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_02] It's the last to get any sort of attention or effort or input. And so it just really bums me out. And I think some of it is the lens that we use to look at payroll, right?

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_01] We look at it in the wrong way, so. Absolutely. And one of the biggest surprises to me has been the number of organizations I've gone into with a multi-billion dollar payroll without a single owner. They have pockets of ownership in there in different places because they're usually, you know, a lot of M&A activity, lack of post-merger integration, multiple geographies. By that, I mean multiple countries and regions of the world. And, again, $2 billion spend. And there's not a single person in the organization accountable for it. That's literally their largest line. Crazy.

[00:15:17] [SPEAKER_02] Crazy, yeah. I mean, look, if you're the CFO of a big company, regardless of the number, it's probably not in your – it's not the front-of-mind thing unless there's a breakdown. Right? I mean, you've got bigger fish to fry. Well, it's like investment.

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_00] You're going to put your investment in the business itself before you start to focus on the payroll.

[00:15:32] [SPEAKER_01] And it rolls up into the business P&Ls, right? Yeah. So it's not like there's simply a single labor P&L that they're looking at. And so it gets broken apart, however the organization is designed. Yeah. And really, you have a unified outflow of all of that capital expenditure – right. But all of that expenditure. And I don't know. It scares me sometimes.

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_02] It does, yeah. We just had a great podcast with Andy Valentine from Ebury where we talked about cross-border effects and all that's going on with payments. And I think we call that episode is, you know, can payroll be a liquidity strategy? Yes, we do. Or payroll as a liquidity strategy. And I love the thought process of that because now, you know, as we get further into moving money in real time, which is becoming very normal, it's very much expected, stable coins are going to make that even more apparent. It is, right? If you're a big company, you're $5 billion, right? At least half of your $10 billion is your payroll.

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_01] And the stable coin concept is interesting to me, and I think it's going to play into a larger trend that I'm seeing. But, I mean, obviously, I'm U.S.-based. We're all U.S.-based. So, I tend to take a fairly U.S.-centric view of the world. Do you see stable coin making as big of an inroad here as we do in other geos?

[00:16:40] [SPEAKER_02] I absolutely do. I'll give you an example. PayPal. Right now, if you go to PayPal, they advertise this at first but not so much now. If you go on there and you buy the stable coin, the PayPal USD, you can get 4% interest from holding that. No cost to own it, no cost to sell it. 4% interest, right? What does that tell you? That's more than you can go get in a high-yield savings in almost every bank, major bank. I think I'm at like three points. What does that tell you how important they see that as? And when you look at like, you know, there's a number of different stable coins, and you have every country.

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_02] I think you've got – there's a tracker out there by the Atlantic that has – I think we're at about 140 countries now that have some level of exploration and maturity. With a digital version of their fiat, I think it's inevitable that we're going to have that come into play. And it's bigger than just liquidity and payroll. It's health, wealth, and retirement, right? We've talked about the 401K movement. We've talked about investing. I mean all those things can be improved by real-time payments.

[00:17:33] [SPEAKER_02] And I think globally, I love fintech and I love real-time money movement because I think it's leveling the playing field for people. There's an inclusivity of money to it.

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_00] I feel like it's very specialized too. For the little business too. So for that to happen, you don't have to broadly have acceptance or adoption by leaders. You have to have a few key folks that are kind of in the know and get comfortable with that in order to make it happen. I'm not sure we've hit critical mass on that by a long shot. But a tipping point really relies on a few and not on the many.

[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, right. I mean just think about like – you know, like I took a trip one time. I think I went to New York City and back, and I couldn't get anyone to take cash from me. Sure. Airport, whatever. Everybody just wanted to – I mean it's just where we are. And I think about, you know, just the speed at which we expect everything and the on-demand nature of things. Why shouldn't money move that fast as well? And I love it because now, you know, you think about a same-day payment in California. You think about for a termination or you think about, you know, any sort of compliance-related activity.

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_02] Being able to move that money to somebody instantly relieves a lot of burden off of the business and the employee – or the payroll team and helps the employee.

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_01] And ACH is moving much, much faster now in the U.S., which helps. But back to your point, Julie, I do believe there's a people element to a stablecoin. And where I've seen it make the most logical sense from an employee perspective is more Europe and Asia where they're moving around. So not the EU, obviously, where everyone's on the Euro, but where someone is moving around cross-border where the currencies change. And so stablecoin, getting a portion of their payment in stablecoin so that they can convert where they're at.

[00:19:05] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:19:05] [SPEAKER_01] And then a portion of their paycheck goes back to the home currency that they want to put in.

[00:19:09] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, everything else is digital. Why not money, right? As long as it's not, you know, something maybe that's speculative like a meme coin or whatever. But with stablecoins, it's tied to the fiat. You know, presumably it's weighted by that currency's government's currency.

[00:19:21] [SPEAKER_01] And it's essentially disrupting banking and it's just a manifestation of that, right? Which is where the eBurries, Transformates, et cetera, of the world want to maintain. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see once, say, Visa or MasterCard decides they want to get into the pay disbursement.

[00:19:34] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Well, did you see? We're going to talk about this on our news episode. Revolut just stepped into the EOR world. They said, hey, we've got 800,000 customers moving money all over the place. We're now going to go ahead and open this up to businesses and step into the payroll side of things.

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_01] That's been an interesting trend. So payroll for so many years, and I think you all have said this on other shows, it's been very methodical, right? We're going to build the engine. We're going to build it from scratch. We're going to do one country at a time and get it right. And you're seeing these fintechs jump in, which is sort of, hey, we're good at this. We're already doing this. We're going to fight our way through it and figure it out and not necessarily be that deep expert to make it happen.

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think what you're seeing is a convergence of technologies and opportunity coming together. You know, you look at the embedded nature of payroll now, right? You've got ADP embedded with Pfizer Clover, right? Right. Bringing payroll where it should have always been, right, where it needs to be. So why not other aspects of tech and money coming together?

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_00] I mean, the simple truth is we really are talking about sometimes the same organizations that can't unwed themselves from 1,200 different reports and get to dashboards and things, you know, juggling money as if they were, you know, proficient financially. So it's just, it's a big leap, right? It is.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_01] It is. How do you find the right vendor? How do you decide which one of these things you're going to go into? Because I think all of our payroll friends take their responsibility very seriously, right? Yeah. Because to your point, it is the trust that an employee places in the organization. It's where that manifests. And honestly, I don't feel like we talk about trust enough, not just for the payroll team, but even our vendors that we're relying on. And how do you decide to go work with one of these new vendors, right?

[00:21:08] [SPEAKER_01] Because if you think about our vendor landscape, 98.5% accuracy is the table stakes, right? The worst vendor in the market that no one enjoys working with, but they're still viable is 98.5% accurate. And the best vendor in the market maybe is 99% accurate, right? So within fractions of a percent, how do we differentiate? And it comes down to trust, what we expect, the experience, do we think we're going to get it from them? And I think that applies to payroll as well as we're trying to affect change in organizations.

[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_01] So lots of dimensions to that that I don't know that we have time to completely unpack, but it is a conversation I think we need to continue having.

[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_00] Hey, you know, before we move on to AI, which I know it's surprising we've made it this far without going too deeply into that. We're talking a little bit about your CFO who said, you know, I don't really want to own it. Payroll being the hot potato, we've all seen that, you know, like there's that gets shuffled around quite a bit. But is there a hotter than hot potato or a redder than redheaded stepchild in tax?

[00:22:08] [SPEAKER_01] Yes. Poor tax. Oh, so where does payroll tax sit within?

[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_02] Nobody gives tax any love.

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_01] No, it's the necessary evil. And then I think, and there's probably a couple of them, but so payroll tax. I find a lot of organizations choose to have a vendor to handle payroll tax. You'll need someone in-house responsible for it. If it's a small enough payroll, it's usually one of the payroll leads that's also managing that vendor.

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_01] But that seems to be when I get complaints from my clients about their vendors, most of the time they're okay with their tax vendor, especially if it's a standalone contract. Now, if it's baked in as part of the, hey, you know, we bought this system and they're going to do our tax for us, that can be iffy sometimes on the quality there. I'm not going to name vendors, but some of the big name vendors that are actually pretty good at all of this, when it becomes that more commoditized service, there's less satisfaction.

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_01] Because it's more automated after the fact processing. Interesting. So, but within the payroll world, I was thinking large hospitality clients of mine where they owned, multinational, they owned the payroll tax team within the payroll function. However, the head of corporate tax got to decide their vendor. Oh, wow. So they had already picked out the vendor. They'd worked on relationships. They'd lined everything up. And the head of corporate tax came in and said, nope, we're putting all tax over here with this provider. You know, redo your plans and deal with it.

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_01] So even though they owned it, there's still that tax function. And again, that tax leader didn't want to own payroll tax. Right. Right. Because they don't view it as real tax sometimes. I've actually had that said to me. I'm not just inferring that at a different company. But yet they then want to influence where it's going to be serviced from. So it's a shout out to our payroll tax colleague.

[00:23:47] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. It makes me think about the AMS vendors, right? Like where, you know, you might want your workday AMS to be done in a certain way, internal or with a certain specialty. And then there's this big portfolio of all of my system's IT AMS. And somebody feels like that would be the right place for the HR AMS to go. Yeah. Totally.

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_02] AMS shared service.

[00:24:07] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. All right. Well, let's get into some cool, you know, fun new things. I follow you and I see a lot of times some of your postings are taglines. And I have a favorite.

[00:24:17] [SPEAKER_01] I have opinions. Yeah.

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_00] That's right. And we all share them widely. So I love to hear some of yours. The one that caught my attention very recently was, I think you're talking about HR saying our instincts are the problem with AI.

[00:24:29] [SPEAKER_01] They are. And so time and time again, and I'll admit I'm guilty of this. And I would say I was a year late to the AI revolution, frankly, just because I'm exhausted. I didn't need one more thing to do, one more thing to think about. I didn't want to have to change or have this device that's in front of me now controlling my life even more than it already does. But I jumped onto the bandwagon, started figuring things out, found some very interesting things. The biggest epiphany for me, which a lot of people are already there, is AI is about process. AI, sure, it relies on data.

[00:24:59] [SPEAKER_01] It needs to be trained. It needs infrastructure. But it's a process efficiency play. Now, maybe it can replace things. I'm actually one of the few people from a former job that I've had that's actually been replaced by AI completely. Oh, wow. But it's because I was a voiceover actor. I did organizational change management and e-learning design development. I did major corporate trainings and videos for Fortune 50 companies. You can do that all now with AI.

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_01] Maybe you want to hire a fancy actor to voiceover an intro or actually you can just get the AI to sound like them, right? And then hopefully they don't sue you. That's actually been displaced. But most jobs, have they actually been displaced or have they been made more efficient? Right. Like maybe tier one call center, but not necessarily for payroll yet because we're just getting to the point where the AI can explain it. So where I'm going with that is we're trying to measure it like it's an IT project. And if you think about any payroll project we've done, right, what's my return on this?

[00:25:51] [SPEAKER_01] I'm going to spend X amount of dollars and within 18 to 36 months, how much am I getting back and has it paid for itself? That's not how AI works right now. Yeah. Right. It's not necessarily heads out. It's not necessarily technology out. So it's a productivity boost, which is much, much harder to measure. And by the way, CFOs are struggling to measure it.

[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_01] CEOs, according to latest data from my own company and a variety of others, a lot of them are candidly fearful for their jobs in the next 24 months if they cannot articulate the value that they have brought back to the organization and hard dollars. And I got to tell you, while we're seeing productivity boosts, et cetera, they're not seeing that hard dollar savings.

[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:30] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[00:26:30] [SPEAKER_00] Well, and it's not an easy direct causal relationship. So as you improve your efficiency, can you really attribute it all to AI? And I do find that a lot of leaders still, you know, the expectations put upon them are, yes, headcount reductions, which is crazy, but true.

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_01] It's a classic measure. It's our instinct to go back and measure it. But we didn't talk about this, but I'll give you a perfect example in my own line of business. This week, I'm at ADP Meeting of the Minds. Yeah. Or last week, I was at ADP Meeting of the Minds. They were doing their big kickoffs, et cetera. I had a big deadline. My team was struggling to do something. I have access to more AI than they do just because we're piloting some things. And I was able to take a process where I would pay an analyst, a junior person, college hire on my team.

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_01] It would have taken them for this particular project. It would have taken them two weeks of dedicated work to build out a global system diagram for a multinational payroll. Within AI, iterating, giving it screenshots, not even giving it data and Excel spreadsheets. I was able to build that diagram in roughly 35 or 40 minutes. Wow. And then it got it, my team would argue 80% of the way. I'd say it was 90% of the way where they had to just fix and tweak some spacing. But when I extrapolate that over the course of a year, I've removed 1,000 hours worth of labor from our overall operations.

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_01] That now they spend, instead of 1,000, they're going to spend 100 hours and they're going to tweak it. And by the way, we're optimizing it so it can be even more repeatable. That's amazing. Right. Right. And then bring that quantifiable effect back. Now, I'm able to go to my leadership. I'm able to have a slightly smaller team, continue to do more because I don't have to keep bringing those folks in. But again, that's not a measure that's easy to take to a board, investors, et cetera.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, that's a great point.

[00:28:14] [SPEAKER_00] I see another thing that is challenging is clients then are expecting, right? Just we expect our providers and other folks to start to embed these efficiencies. And so they want to tell you, you know, like, hey, you should, so shouldn't you be doing this for me for 50% less or whatever magic number they throw out of the air? And yet they want something, their problems are very unique. They're very situational.

[00:28:38] [SPEAKER_03] Sure.

[00:28:38] [SPEAKER_00] They're not boilerplate template reproductions, one of the other. And so, you know, which is it that you're expecting? Do you just want a boilerplate thing that I can, you know, make 50% more efficient and 50% less costly? Or do you really want to solve your unique problem?

[00:28:53] [SPEAKER_01] Well, and I think for your audience, you have both buyers and influencers, right? And there's maybe a relevant distinction, which is am I buying a service where I expect that service to be reduced time and time again? I'm going to want that done more efficiently over time. Sure, they have to make enough to stay a going concern and a viable business. But if they're continuing to produce the same thing, we need to drive efficiency year over year. However, in a lot of the situations we're describing, they're buying expertise and value, right? Like what value are we able to give to the organization?

[00:29:22] [SPEAKER_01] Sure, the traditional model has been to price by time and materials. You know, I'm going to charge you X dollars an hour for the hours that it's going to take me to get there. However, the value, to your point, that we're delivering is no less important, even though I was able to do it more efficiently. So are we paying for time or are we paying for value? Right.

[00:29:39] [SPEAKER_00] You know, something else I haven't talked about yet in some of our conversations has been I see increasingly procurement and legal trying to deal with how to handle AI, specifically calling out and limiting or forbidding the use of AI in any of the consulting work or engagements. Interesting. Are you seeing similar things pop up?

[00:29:59] [SPEAKER_01] We definitely have that negotiation when we're going through this. And there's a couple of ways to get around it. And you'll see larger consulting firms structure it to where we can use AI to perform tasks, but we will not learn or retain anything from your AI. It does not join our data set or our productivity. Other clients want us to stay within their walled garden, within their enterprise AI, which we should talk about enterprise AI versus regular at some point before we leave. But I'm also seeing that.

[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_01] And then, frankly, I am seeing a lot of companies, even within their own employees, say, we're just not using it yet. We're not comfortable. And that's a really silly mistake because that creates shadow AI.

[00:30:36] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:30:36] [SPEAKER_01] Because people are doing it anyway.

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_02] That's true. Yeah. Explain what shadow AI is. I know, but I look for our audience.

[00:30:42] [SPEAKER_01] So in my mind, when I'm Joe's definition of shadow AI, which is it's any AI that's being used outside of the company's walled garden. Right. Right. Now, whether that is, I don't want to name them because folks would be listening, but you have one of those speakers that likes to talk to you. And it's basically a glorified kitchen timer that also plays music. Right. There's AI embedded in there. Or you use the function on your phone to ask questions, query. Or even now when you Google something at the top of Google, it's starting to give you instructions.

[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_01] And so what a lot of folks will start doing is they'll have their own subscription somewhere, whether they pay for it or they just sign up for it. And, well, my company's not letting me do this. I'm going to just put it in over here on the side and see what answer it gives me. There's no data protection and there's leakage. Or you could even have it where a department buys something, but IT is not sophisticated enough to control that spend and set it up. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed.

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. There's a lot of co-pilot and chat GPT sort of nascency going on around. And you're right. It isn't being governed from the top down. And I think that's why you're getting these results. We know that's why you're getting these results.

[00:31:41] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:31:41] [SPEAKER_02] Well, 95% of organizations say they're not getting value. Well, because no one's managing the value. No one's managing the change. No one's teaching anyone.

[00:31:48] [SPEAKER_01] And we do structure it in funny ways. So I'm fighting a fight with one organization where they've made the decision that while it can have access to all of the data that a person is appropriately having access to, they've limited the level of detail it can go into. Yeah. So I can see it, but it can't open stuff up to then truly get you analytics. But I get asked the question a lot, which you haven't yet, which is where am I seeing it actually create value within the payroll space, right? Yeah.

[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_01] So they're the common things for checking and just, you know, hey, that looks wrong or, you know, don't worry about that difference for Joe's check. He got a bonus last month and we knew that was coming. Two interesting things. One personal and then one I saw at a conference. So personal, really large, challenging system implementation, taking someone off legacy mainframe. Literally, the data is stored on tapes. If you want to go back, you actually have to go get the tapes out of deep storage.

[00:32:42] [SPEAKER_02] Unstructured data. Yeah.

[00:32:43] [SPEAKER_01] And brutal going into a SaaS environment. And so paying tons of people to be Excel jockeys and do massive amounts of VLOOKUPs between the systems and try to normalize data. And it was hours and hours and hours a day every time we got a new compare file just to get them lined up.

[00:32:56] [SPEAKER_02] Yep. I've been there.

[00:32:57] [SPEAKER_01] Took it into Copilot, which I'm not the biggest fan of Copilot. They're better out there. Took it into Copilot because that's what was approved. Did a fairly structured prompt, but all again, natural language, meaning I wasn't using any coding. I'm not smart when it comes to the computer stuff and doing anything fancy. We gave it everyone's roles, gave it what we were looking for, gave it examples of what we were seeing incorrect and why. And within three minutes, it was able to, between 90 and 95 percent accuracy, say, hey, these issues, that belongs to the system implementer.

[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_01] These issues, that goes back on the client side that we need to look at. These are acceptable variances because like one of the examples, and they'll know who they are if they're listening to this, the vendor loaded the time file wrong and there were duplicates. Yes. And so it was very easily able to triage. And I know people are saying, well, I could do that in Excel too. Yes, but it takes time. It was very easily able to go back in and say, okay, I see the overreporting here, the underreporting there, the dollar amounts match up. It's simply a load issue. We're going to move that off. I didn't even have to tell it to ignore those. It saw it. That's great. It inferred.

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_01] And then it did ask me to check, but it disposed of that to where if you think about your payroll folks, they have a thousand things going on. They're getting constant pings, et cetera. I'd have to take the time to build the VLOOKUPs, to go in each time, to then, oh, did I do it right? Is the data starting to line up? If I'm just able to put it in the system, the system gets me 90, 95 percent of the way there, and I'm just able to come in and tweak and adjust. Right. That's a huge, it removes a huge amount of friction from the entire process.

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_01] I know for me, the less friction there is, the more likely I'm actually going to look at something in a timely manner and keep iterating. Yeah. And the fact that if we work on it, it might get us even better moving forward. That one was huge. The other one, which I've been saying for years that we need, is the chatbot that doesn't just give you an FAQ and a training, but it actually services what you need. And what to do about it. Yeah, exactly. And I'll give a shout out. Workday was one of the first I saw do this, where, hey, I need my pay stub.

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_01] And it would actually, I think it was the folks at Panera Bread did a presentation on it a couple of years ago at Payo, where they were talking about how they were able to use the chatbot to really reduce their tier one inquiries and then drive up employee satisfaction. CHROs love that, of course. This week, I don't always give them a shout out, but I will. ADP has their new ADP assist product.

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_01] But what I really liked about it, and I know you all have been embedded or had those conversations with them, what I liked about it was they're embedding it in Copilot. And again, I said, I'm not a huge fan of Copilot, but Copilot is the enterprise standard. And what's always so challenging is, well, oh, I have an HR question. I have to go open Salesforce's bot to answer my HR question. Oh, I have a payroll question. I need to go to ADP. Oh, I have a general question. I have to go to. No, it's in Copilot. Hey, I have a payroll question.

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_01] And what they've done is they've walled it off because the first I was telling someone about this on a call of payroll folks, just a networking group. Oh, well, I'm scared because I don't want that payroll data out. It doesn't actually share the payroll data with Copilot. Copilot is just the front end. And as it surfaces, Copilot does not take what it's surfacing, but it gives you within Copilot, hey, I need my pay stuff from this date. It brings the pay stuff forward. Hey, this looks wrong. What about this benefit? It answers the benefit question within the Copilot environment and greatly improves the employee experience.

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Through that process. And so I feel the need to give them the shout out. I'm going to sit back and watch to see how this plays out. Yeah, I'd be curious. Does this actually work as great as the marketing videos make it seem? Yeah.

[00:36:14] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, right?

[00:36:14] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, we'll see, right? It depends on how, again, what you're feeding it and how you're using it. And how you implement. Yeah, totally.

[00:36:21] [SPEAKER_00] Well, how about, I know, I think you had some things to share regarding resistance and what you've been seeing and experiencing from a resistance perspective.

[00:36:29] [SPEAKER_01] And I think we've hit on some of this. So from a resistance perspective, I get asked a lot from HR leaders, payroll leaders, is my data safe? Okay, so we have Copilot or we've signed up with Gemini. We have, I haven't had too many with Claude yet, but we have our enterprise AI system, but I'm afraid. And so there is a conversation to be had with IT, which is how did they design it? And if they did enterprise AI right, two things happen. One is the model should not be learning from the chats.

[00:36:57] [SPEAKER_01] The model should be learning from curated data that they put in front of it. Yeah. The other part of enterprise AI that should be set up correctly is that you only have access to data that you have access to today. Yeah. So think about Microsoft, we have our security profiles. How many times do we get to send a file and it says you don't have access, you have to request, right? As that example, that enterprise AI should use that same data security landscape to give you access to your data. So what you see should not be the same thing as what a manager sees out on the front line.

[00:37:24] [SPEAKER_01] And that's a deliberate design decision that needs to be made. But made right really helps drive value. Now for payroll and HR departments, you need to look at your data. Where are you storing it? Who has access to it? What files are you referencing? Do you have them in a secure lockdown folder? Is it password protected? Because even in the AI, if it's password protected, sure. Eventually there is AI smart enough to get past it. But your average user with a regular deployment can't hack that file, right? Those are things that only specialized uses do.

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_01] So if you're treating your data right today and then you deploy enterprise AI following those same data permissions, there's not that worry and challenge that you have.

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, yeah. Got to do some work on the front end.

[00:38:06] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, but don't do shadow AI, which is, oh, I laugh. We do a lot of board presentations on what to think about AI to corporate directors, right? These are the folks that are the fiduciaries of the organization. And the number of times in the past year I've heard, well, we gave them a board packet and we've been talking about AI. So they ran it through AI to understand what it meant, but they ran it through their own personal AI, not the enterprise AI. And in some instances they ran it through the free version, not the private version. So the free version, it all goes out into the public domain, right?

[00:38:35] [SPEAKER_01] Like there are those challenges in education that we need to have. But what I would say is it is safe. It's not hard. And frankly, you have to play around. And yeah, you might get some stupid answers at first, but refine the prompts, actually help it.

[00:38:49] [SPEAKER_02] Prompting is a skill.

[00:38:49] [SPEAKER_01] And a lot of times I actually have it help me walk backwards, like, okay, this messed up, didn't meet my expectations. What do we need to do differently? And it's very good at saying step by step, think about these things and let's try again. That's great.

[00:39:00] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, that's great. I mean, yeah, look, I mean, it's iterative. That experimentation and learning and progressions in anything. Why not this, you know? Yeah.

[00:39:09] [SPEAKER_01] A great use case, actually, it was on LinkedIn from just in the big global payroll network is an organization that looked through, I think in any given month, they did 11 different files that they had to compare against each other. It was something like 90 checks that they did for every pay run across these 11 different files. They were able to create an agent. And when I say create an agent, nothing fancy. It's not Jarvis and Iron Man. They were literally going, hey, we do these checks across this data set. They structured each check. And now the AI is able to go and say, yes, it aligns. No, it doesn't.

[00:39:39] [SPEAKER_01] If it doesn't, kicks out the response. So it's doing that, what I used to call printing it out and taking the ruler, the ruler check. It's doing the ruler check for them, but they built it precisely how they wanted that ruler check to go. And you don't have to be a developer to do that. It's natural language to tell it. It lays out the instructions. And actually, from a trust perspective, I've been laughing recently, the AI talks to itself now while you use it. And you can see each of its reasoning steps as it goes along.

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_01] And I find great humor when it corrects itself and argues. But I tell that story to say that's also there to increase your comfort. That you told it what to do. It's doing it. It's explaining it. And then it's bringing you back challenges. Right. I love that.

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_00] I also think it's natural for HR teams to kind of wait for somebody to surface and take the lead. Or, you know, the most experimental guy, right, is going to play around with it, whether you do or not. And I really think that there should be more team leaders that work with the group. Whether it's in your weekly team meetings or some cadence that you set up and say, look, let's do something simple together. How do I know I'm putting a query or a prompt in a safe part of AI?

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_00] Like, there's prompts freaking everywhere now on our desktop. And it sounds like a very stupid question. But if I have it, my team's probably got it too. Or at least half of them, you know, I like to think. And so I think it's that governance discussion.

[00:41:00] [SPEAKER_01] You know, we talk about payroll governance. But I think even within our own teams, we need to have that governance. An interesting trend I've seen is that I'm finding resistance to AI in the younger generations. And I'm in the mid-40s. I believe I'm classified as an exennial because I crossed the bridge from Gen X to millennial, right, right where I was born. But I find that it's my age bracket that's driving the most innovation, at least within the pockets that I'm seeing at the moment.

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_01] The younger folks, whether it's a lack of trust or fear for roles, et cetera, they'll do it, but they're not as gung-ho. You always have one or two that are going to jump in. And then the more seasoned folks just don't need another thing, right? We've done it this way for this long. Let me just keep doing what works. And what I haven't yet cracked is how do we drive that? Other than me leading by example doing it and then my teams having to work faster and harder to keep up. And so they adopt it. I haven't yet seen that play out.

[00:41:56] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, sure. And if you're having aha moments, how do you share those with a team without scaring them? Right. Right. And having them think, oh, well, then I'm really like the super dummy.

[00:42:05] [SPEAKER_01] Well, yeah, it's building that trust that it's A, that you're not dumb because you didn't think of it first. And B, this isn't to replace your job. Yeah. It's so that there are more important things to do. Again, I'm a consultant. We think in PowerPoint. There are more important things to do than align boxes on that PowerPoint. Right. Now, if the boxes aren't aligned, there's going to be a major problem. But there are other higher... Everyone's eyes go to the wrong place.

[00:42:25] [SPEAKER_00] By the way, try getting AI to align boxes and fix fonts. That is not a good use case.

[00:42:30] [SPEAKER_01] No. It's wildly frustrating.

[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_02] I'll leave the art away from there.

[00:42:35] [SPEAKER_01] But what it is able to do is it is able to take those rote tasks that took way too much time and it is moving them along at exponential speed. Again, just the ability to build the VLOOKUPs. And look, if you're one of those people that needs to trust it, do it within Excel. Yeah. It's embedded within Excel and it can actually build all the formulas for you, show you rather than just giving you an output. So there are ways for you to build that comfort level and trust. I know I mentioned trust earlier. Right, right. So that you're happier and then you feel good about taking it forward because you understand how it did it. Yeah.

[00:43:05] [SPEAKER_00] It would be really fun if next conference season, you know, there's always a buzzword, right?

[00:43:09] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[00:43:10] [SPEAKER_00] Engagement, you know, AI, whatever. It would be really fun if trust came up as the buzzword of another thing. Because, I mean, all those things are still there.

[00:43:20] [SPEAKER_02] It should be there now.

[00:43:21] [SPEAKER_01] I mean, hopefully. It should be. Hopefully, yeah. It should be articulated more and more even by the vendors. Because, again, they're realizing that what differentiates them a lot of times is becoming less and less the tech behind them and more the service and experience they provide. How did we make you feel? Did we get it done? Yep. And did we stress you out while we did it? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:43:41] [SPEAKER_00] Have an aura ring. Did we stress you out as we did it? Yeah.

[00:43:45] [SPEAKER_02] Well, look, just to kind of round this out, any advice to folks out there, companies out there that might not be in the most transformed state at this point but need to be getting going, if you will? Sure.

[00:43:58] [SPEAKER_01] It's basic, but I want to go back to governance, which is, do you know where all your inputs come from? Do you know who is accountable for them? Who gets to actually approve a change to those inputs? Yeah. And who should be consulted, right? If you don't have governance, I don't know that. You're always going to be reactionary. Yeah. Agreed. And it doesn't mean the world orbits around payroll because that's also one of the misconceptions. But it does mean that we have a shared accountability to produce a paycheck. It doesn't all fall on payroll to do.

[00:44:24] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:44:25] [SPEAKER_01] And if they want to make a change, they need to work with all of the other stakeholders.

[00:44:29] [SPEAKER_02] Are you saying it takes a village to turn out an accurate payroll?

[00:44:32] [SPEAKER_01] It might. It very well might.

[00:44:33] [SPEAKER_02] It actually is in a team effort in an enterprise.

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_00] And it's not an entire village of agents either, is it? No.

[00:44:39] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. No, I could see the one person sitting by themselves that does everything that, you know, they're running a payroll for 100 people. You still have a business owner that gets to make decisions that they need to consult you on because you have a timeline that you need to do them. There's still probably someone that's figuring out technology or there's someone that runs finance that you're dependent on for certain things. So you may have one stakeholder rather than two dozen stakeholders, but the concept comes through. Earnings elements. How many people have a data dictionary for their earnings elements?

[00:45:08] [SPEAKER_01] A, this three letter, you know, name. What does it mean? What does it do? Is it taxable? Is it not taxable?

[00:45:13] [SPEAKER_02] Why do we need eight of them? Yeah. For the same thing? Exactly.

[00:45:16] [SPEAKER_01] I think the highest count I ever did at a conference was over 2000. Oh my goodness. That was the easy one. It was almost 8,000 earnings elements. Crazy. Because one for one for every single thing that they wanted to do. Just insane. There's a lot of that. There's a lot of that.

[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_02] Well, Joe, listen, this has been fantastic. Where can folks get in touch with you? I know you have some good stuff on LinkedIn, but where else?

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I'm always out there on LinkedIn. Occasionally I'm yelling at the airlines on Twitter. But, you know, folks are always able to reach out and I respond to LinkedIn connections and messages anytime or they're always welcome to email me. I assume you'll put that in. Yeah, we'll share it.

[00:45:49] [SPEAKER_00] Absolutely. We'll share it with the show notes.

[00:45:51] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, we appreciate you, Joe. Seriously, thanks for coming on. We got to do this more often. You have to come back and yeah, share what you're seeing out there. Sounds great. Appreciate you, man. Thanks, everyone.